


in your dreams, whatever they be

by Loz



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 15:51:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9448907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loz/pseuds/Loz
Summary: It was a bit worrying, but Sam would almost call Gene cute when he was dozing





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talkingtothesky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkingtothesky/gifts).



> Written for Sky <3\. Based on this line: “I enjoy waking up and not having to go to work. So I do it three or four times a day.” - Gene Hunt Perret.

It was a bit worrying, but Sam would almost call Gene cute when he was dozing. If he was feeling particularly masochistic, he might even say it to his face. While he was sleeping, Gene had a tendency of leaving his mouth open, his top two bunny-like teeth on display. His long eyelashes swept against his cheeks as dark, delicate wings. His chest and stomach rose and fell like a rhythmic, comforting metronome. There was a peacefulness to his expression – the furrow of his brow smoothed out, the tenseness he often held in his shoulders loosened, the ever-present need to be the Hard Man unnecessary. It made Sam look at him in a different light. A dimmer, quieter light, because he didn’t want to disturb Gene’s nap.

At first, Sam would get annoyed at seeing Gene taking an afternoon siesta, no matter how perversely adorable he looked. He’d grumble to himself that it was all right for some, he’d look at his caseload and sneer, he’d contemplate the numerous noises he could make to wake Gene the fuck up. But after some time, he started to notice that Gene would come in scruffy and change in his office, that by the early evening his eyes would be blurry and red-rimmed. That Gene didn’t seem to get any sleep except those snatched hour-long moments in his office. Weeks went by and Gene would be there at the station before Sam and would only ever leave first to go to the pub.

“Got any plans for your three days off next week?” Sam asked one Thursday, his interrogation technique dialled down to subtle.

“Whatever it is you want, the answer’s no,” Gene replied, not taking his eyes off his steaming mug of tea.

“I have an offer rather than a request.”

“Well la di dah. Still don’t wanna hear it, Simpering Samantha.”

“I think you’d wanna hear this,” Sam said, persistent to his core.

Had there been a superlative version of skeptical in Sam’s vocabulary, he would have used it to describe Gene’s expression at that time. “I can’t tell if you’re vastly overestimating me, or yourself, but either way, you’re gonna be disappointed.”

“I booked you a maisonette, out in the country.”

At this, Gene was a quiet sort of furious, and therefore nine times scarier than when he yelled. “You what?”

“You never seem to get a decent night’s rest, so I did some investigating and found out about your living arrangements, and I don’t know, I wanted to help somehow.”

“You went poking around in my affairs?”

“I was curious!”

“You could’ve just asked.”

Sam huffed out a sigh. “Okay, Gene, I should’ve come out and asked if your wife had packed up and left you in a lonely house haunted with memories, but I was trying to be tactful, all right?”

Gene sniffed, wiped his nose with his shirt-sleeve, gave a shrug. “All right.”

“Fantastic. So now that that’s established, you want the details?”

“If I must.”

Sam rolled his eyes, but handed over the information, because he was a kind and considerate friend. Or, at the very least, desperate to get Gene out of his hair.

Of course, on the second day of Gene’s sojourn to the countryside and hopefully blissful slumber, there was a series of murders perpetrated around the station. Sam would’ve worked the case with Annie alone, but there were extenuating circumstances. Namely the clues that the murderer was someone from Gene’s past, and was murdering Gene’s CIs.

Gene answered the door with his hair sticking up every whichway, his shirt on inside-out. His face had pillow imprints and his pyjama trousers were sitting low on his hips. He looked impossibly sweet. He regarded Sam at first with aggressive jut of his chin and then a far more disturbing once-over. He smirked.

“Was wondering when you’d finally appear,” he said, hauling Sam into the room with a firm hand on Sam’s upper arm.

“You’ve heard?” Sam asked, casting a quick glance around the maisonette and commending himself on a job well done. It looked comfortable and homey, the bed smothered in a pile of blankets.

“Heard? No. Seen. Wouldn’t’ve thought this is something you’d talk about,” Gene returned, edging Sam toward the bed with slow and steady movements.

Sam sat down and stared up at Gene, wondering what he was talking about. A second later, Gene was tilting his head up with fingers under his chin and slowly leaning down.

At this point, Sam could have said, “Stop.”

He could have reared backwards.

He could have hissed that Gene had the wrongest of all ideas.

But, as unexpected as this was, Sam didn’t want it to end before it had begun. He pushed into Gene’s kiss with joyous vigour, clasping a hand against the back of his neck, fingers tangling into his hair. He parted Gene’s lips with his tongue, sought something he hadn’t even known he was looking for. He hummed against Gene’s drugging kisses and almost forgot time existed.

Kissing Gene wasn’t like finally solving a challenging case, or bickering over trivialities, or settling into a comfortable bed, like Sam had imagined it could be. He’d anticipated many different scenarios, but still not contemplated this.

Kissing Gene was like waking up and not having to go into work. It was uncompromised elation. It was freedom. It was destined to be painfully fleeting.

When Gene went to undo his shirt buttons, Sam knew he had to ease away.

“I’m not actually here for this,” Sam said, regret tinging every word.

“Could’ve fooled me,” Gene replied, already sounding gratifyingly rough-voiced. He pouted. Lips kiss-pink and swollen, the pout was even more impressive than usual. He moved to the side, sat alongside Sam. “Why’re you here, then, in this nice, secluded spot?”

“We need you back at the station, Guv. Someone’s going around killing your CIs. Leaving notes and bloodied corpses everywhere. It’s very inconvenient.”

“And to think, I was happy to see you.”

Sam didn’t bother to disguise his surprise. “You were?”

“I’m always happy to be proved right, even to myself.” Gene’s gaze focussed on Sam’s lips again. “You let me kiss you.”

“You think I should’ve pushed you away?”

“You’re the man on a mission.”

“You’re forgetting I’m a cop, I can take on more than one case at a time,” Sam scoffed. He leaned into Gene’s side. “I wanted you to kiss me. And it wasn’t an any body will do situation.” He took a steadying breath. “Is that gonna be a problem?”

“I reckon it’s supposed to be, but no, it’s not,” Gene said, soft in way Sam had rarely heard. He nudged back into Sam. “Couldn’t be anybody but you, either.”

After Gene had got dressed and they’d tidied the room some – or rather, Sam had tidied and Gene had rolled his eyes – Sam led the way to the car he’d borrowed. “How’d you sleep, anyway?”

“Like a newborn babe.”

“That’s not good. That’s appalling.”

Gene grunted an affirmation. “Unfortunately, I need a warm body before I get a proper night’s rest,” he admitted. “Something soft but not too spongey. Something that’ll drone on and on about ridiculously dull tedium to send me to snoozeland.”

Sam smiled against his better judgement. “Good luck with that.”

He thought about what it would be like to wake up wrapped up in Gene, to witness his oddly adorable serenity up close. He imagined how it’d feel to have his chest pressed up against Gene’s back, his arms holding loosely around his middle. He wondered how he’d cope with Gene’s snuffling snore, then remembered how calming he’d found it when Gene took over his cot during the Haslam case.

“You’re quiet. It’s giving me quite a turn. Open up, Sammy-boy, let it all out.”

“I was thinking about how cute you are when you sleep,” Sam said. It may not have been the absolute truth, but there was an honesty to it. 

Gene was affronted, indignant, loud. “Cute? Gene Hunt isn’t cute. He’s a walking, talking menace.”

“That may be so, but in dreams you can be anyone you want to be. And I’ve a feeling you’re a great big teddy bear.”

“Knew I should never have let you get so familiar.”

“This is only the start,” Sam warned. Promised.

Gene looked at him with a heated look that wasn’t anger. It felt like its own kind of warning. Its own kind of promise. Sam curled his fingers around the steering wheel to stop himself from curling them around Gene and dragging him into another kiss. There’d be time for that later.


End file.
